This invention relates to a method and system for conducting secure financial transactions over a communications network and more particularly to a method and system for transmitting payments securely over a computer network, such as the Internet, and for transmitting sensitive information securely over public communication channels.
As is self-evident, on-line commerce has experienced tremendous growth over the last few years but even with that growth consumers are still troubled and concerned about using personal financial information and transmitting such information, such as credit card numbers and personal identification numbers, over public communications networks, such as the Internet. As a result, over the last few years, companies have struggled to find a way—the best way—to ensure the security of payments made over a computer network and to decrease the risk of theft or misuse of financial information.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,883,810 entitled “Electronic Online Commerce Card With Transaction Proxy Number For Online Transactions” and assigned to Microsoft Corporation, is directed to a system which provides for each transaction a temporary transaction number and associates it with the permanent account number; the transaction number looks like a real credit card number and the customer uses that transaction number and submits it to the merchant as a proxy for the customer account number. In this matter, the customer does not have to transmit over a public network his or her real credit card number.
In the '810 patent, the merchant passes along the transaction number to the issuing institution, which in turn uses the transaction number as an index, accesses the real customer account number and processes the authorization, sending the authorization reply back to the merchant under the transaction number. As a result, risk is purportedly minimized not only because the customer only transmits a transaction number but also because the proxy number is good only for a single purchase—theft “would not greatly benefit a thief because it cannot be repeatedly used for other purchases or transactions.” Col. 2, lines 60-61.
There is still a need to improve upon the prior art systems and in particular there is a need for a method and system for conducting a secure financial transaction over the Internet which avoids requiring the creation and transmission of a unique repeatedly generated transaction number to replace the transmission of the permanent account number for each conducted transaction.